This makes absolute complete and utter sense. People buy perceptions, not reality. And people are far more concerned about peer pressure than they are concerned about their own judgement.

There is a make of car that is distinctly average. In fact some of the smaller models are not very good at all. Yet it manages to sell extremely well despite selling at a premium price. Because people want to be seen behind the badge. They will pay thousands of dollars in premium to buy just a few dollars worth of chrome and enamel badge. And most people buy silver and grey ones, because that is what everyone else does. All due to the power of marketing. The brand is presented as sporty which is just the image every housewife wants when she does the school run. Customers just don’t realise when they are victims.

If you are a game developer and you tell your mum about the game you are working on then that is marketing. Marketing is any communication. So it is a fact that a game with zero marketing will have zero sales.

Over the years I  have never seen a game get the sales that it deserved just for its quality. Yet I have many times seen a game get far more sales than it deserves because of its marketing. And I have also seen many good games fail because of bad marketing.

Just look at the five games I was writing about yesterday. They are virtually identical yet they have massively different numbers of players. The difference is just the marketing. Marketing is more important than the game, this is a self evident truth.

Yet still there are very many game publishers who do not understand this. Many self and small publishers on the iPhone App Store, for instance. There you can see that marketed games sell well, non marketed games sell badly. It has precious little to do with the quality of the game. (Unless it is a total dog).

Now EEDAR has done research in the game marketplace from which they say “Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality scores”. And actually the difference is even bigger than that, because the scores form part of the marketing!

So there you have it. If you want to sell more games and make more money then send me an email and I will come and sort it out for you!

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We have at least five games originating in China now that are remarkably similar to each other. Evony you know about, Kingory I have written about before. Fog of War, Napoleonic War (Nap War) and Lords Online are pretty much the same game again. OK the maps and story are different each time, but much of the rest remains the same. Empire Craft has also been written about here.

Evony, earlier this year, claimed the following provenance: “Evony is owned by UMGE (Universal Multiplayer Game Entertainment). Founded by a small group of avid Chinese game developers, UMGE is based in Guangzhou, China and develops online multiplayer games.” Here is a summary of  some of the Evony articles on this site.

Kingory’s provenance seems to be that it is an English language version of the immensely popular Chinese language game ReXueSanguo . Whilst it is virtually identical to Evony the management attitudes are completely different so whist the two games obviously came from the same place they seem to be run by different people. It’s stated ownership is: © 2008 – 2009 JoyPort UUYX (China). P.R. China Internet Culture Business License Permit: 2005-075

Nap War “is owned and operated by SOHO Union International Ltd (SOHO Union)”. “We started our business as a small enterprise in HongKong, making our first product called Fog of War: Napoleonic War. Now SOHO has approximately 100 employees worldwide with each one showing great passion, remarkable creativity and efficient teamwork in their efforts to achieve our goal.”

Empire Craft is also a very similar game. It has the addition of 3 races and allows you to queue buildings up. In a letter to this site they said they were owned by: Oak Pacific Interactive, No.8 North Third Ring Road East, Chao Yang District, Beijing.

Lords Online is an announced and reviewed game from IGG Inc (I Got Games) who are well established and already publish a range of games. And once again it is pretty much the same game. IGG are substantial, well established and well funded and seem to have offices in China, Hong Kong and the West.

So that is five iterations of pretty much the same game that I know about. So there are probably more, with even more to come. All come from China. All allow you to buy game achievements instead of earning them by playing the game. And several of them are marketing by using the high profile, high cost, Google advertising route.

One wonders where these games are coming from. Who actually wrote what is the original game and how it ended up in what seem to be so many different hands. Also the business model they seem to be all adopting. Is that imitation or are they working to a template?

And what are their chances of success? People are not stupid and the internet allows a flow of information so the gaming world will quickly realise that these are all pretty much the same game. At Evony most players have deserted the game once they have sussed it out, after this will they even bother with the others? And then there is the small number of players willing to pay a considerable amount of money to play these games. Are there enough of them to go round and so finance the high risk Google advertising strategy?

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Last week we had the USA October sales statistics from NPD showing game sales of $573 million, down from $698 million last year. So are we in trouble? Is gaming on a downwards spiral? Are people finding better things to do with their time and money?

The answer is no, and here’s why:

• The industry has moved online and away from paper and cardboard massively during the last year. There is a plethora of new MMOs, for instance. Even the game consoles are moving increasingly to downloaded content. And the iPhone has grown from nothing to become a major gaming platform. NPD only measures the high street retail spend.
• Over the last year there has been a massive rise in secondhand game sales. So people are still buying games, but the same physical units are often sold multiple times and only the first time shows up on NPD.
• The game industry turnover at retail revolves around a small number of blockbusters. October this year was very light on these, as is the whole of Q4 this year. A lot of this can be put down to the industry running scared of Modern Warfare 2. People don’t even want to launch in the same quarter as this.
• Music/dance games were largely a fad and that is now over. Sales have more than halved in this sector.
• Another high value sku, Wii Fit, is tapering off in sales compared with the craze that it was last year.
• The games industry has structural and management problems. These will be worked through, but there is no doubt that the industry is not making the most of the opportunities open to it.

So there we have it, the whole industry doesn’t need to go on a burger flipping course just yet.

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I would like to say a big thank you to all the many people who have contributed to this fund, I have been more than pleasantly surprised by the response. Every amount, no matter small, will help, it all adds up. And whilst I am truly appreciative of everyone’s generosity I have actually been shocked at how much some people are willing to donate to this cause.

There are several issues at stake here. The first is libel tourism. Earlier this year Evony were very pleased to repeatedly post this (I have the screen grabs as evidence): “Evony is owned by UMGE (Universal Multiplayer Game Entertainment). Founded by a small group of avid Chinese game developers, UMGE is based in Guangzhou, China and develops online multiplayer games.” Then on July 22 this year (after I wrote the articles they object to) they formed a Delaware company, Evony LLC. This company is now suing me for libel in Sydney, Australia whilst I live in Coventry, England.

If this case is allowed to proceed it will create a precedent and open the floodgates for anyone to litigate anywhere against anyone they don’t like. It will stifle all our freedoms because the rich guy will always have the upper hand and will be able to choose the country with the most punitive laws.

The second issue is reputation management. Unlike the print media, that our libel laws were designed for, online content can be unpublished, ie removed. So now a huge legal industry has sprung up where authors are threatened with libel action unless they remove content that the person paying the solicitor objects to, whether it is the truth or not. Obviously the authors invariably remove the content, such is the massive cost of defending a libel action. So the internet is being massively censored, usually by the people who have something to hide that we should know about.

The third issue is just plain freedom of speech, the foundation of our democratic society. What I wrote about Evony was the truth and fair comment. This supposedly American company has not acted against me in America, they would be laughed out of court because of the Constitutional protection of free speech. However British libel law was designed to protect the rich from the gossip of their servants. And it is an extension of this British law that is in force in Australia. What this means is that Evony can make many strange and outrageous claims against me and I have to go to great lengths to disprove every single one in court, to the satisfaction of a jury. This obviously puts me at a massive disadvantage in the case.

The fourth issue is Evony itself. I don’t like the way that you can buy in game achievements, the way they are constantly badgering players for money, that the game exposes young people to online gambling,  the fact that this blog (and others) were comment spammed repeatedly and I don’t like their risque bait and switch advertising. There is much more not to like but I don’t want to add to the list of things that I have to prove in court!

And the amazing thing is that I have actually caused them no harm whatsoever. When I wrote my article less than a million people had joined the game. In the few short months since that has risen to over ten million. Admittedly most of those have since left the game, for obvious reasons. So it looks like the old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity is true. It seems very likely that my writing has driven more people to go and try the game. In other words I have had the opposite effect that they are claiming.

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This is brilliant. And about time too. Some people modify their Xbox game consoles so that they can steal games. They don’t want to pay the developers for all the work that has gone into making the game. They are quite happy to be thieves when they think that they won’t be caught.

But Microsoft has caught them! They have quietly been using Xbox Live to check every machine on there (20ish million) to see if they have been modified. And now they are banning all the thieves. Microsoft say a small percentage have been banned. The BBC is reporting that it is 600,000. Rumour on the web has it at nearer a million.

An Xbox is absolutely brilliant with Xbox Live. It is the biggest and best gaming portal in the world. Take away Live and an Xbox is substantially degraded in what it offers. So taking Live away from the thieves makes their Xboxes close to useless.

So the thieves are screaming in anger all over the net. Which is exceptionally funny to watch as they have been caught red handed. They have no options now but to go and buy a new Xbox and start a new Live account. So that’s possibly a million extra Xbox 360s that Microsoft will sell this Christmas. The profit on these will probably not get them back what they have lost to their games being stolen, but it is a contribution. Also their timing is brilliant, just as the biggest game ever, Modern Warfare 2, is launched. No wonder the thieves are so annoyed.

Overall this is one of the better moments in the ongoing war between those who work to create brilliant games and those thieves who try to steal that work from them.

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Everyone reading this will know that most mainstream journalists and most politicians do not understand video games, it is one of the main themes of this blog and so has been written about here in dozens of articles (here are just a few):

The Bible Vs video games

Keith Vaz

American neo conservative has video game sex problem

Evil American hoaxer exposed

Another silly woman writes for the Daily Mail

German cultural vandalism

Antichrist

Out of the lack of understanding comes fear. So we have lots of politicians and journalists who are frightened of video games. And so they come out with a lot of criticism of gaming that is a best misinformed but which is often just plain wrong, to the point of being exactly opposite to the truth.

Two exceptions to this in the UK are the MPs Ed Vaizey and Tom Watson, both of whom have listened to the games industry. So they are well informed and say sensible things.

Our arch nemesis in Parliament is Keith Vaz who never misses an opportunity to display his lack of understanding of video games in speeches in the House. After Vaz’s latest ignorant outburst, about Modern Warfare 2, Tom Watson had heard enough. He hurried to his computer and set up a Facebook group, Gamer’s Voice, in response. Here is his description of the group: “Are you sick of UK newspapers and (my fellow) politicians beating up on gaming? So am I. The truth is, UK gamers need their own pressure group. I want to help you start one up.  I don’t know how it should work yet but please register your interest if you agree that gamers need their voice hear in the corridors of power.”

News of this spread round the web like wildfire, pretty soon Gamer’s Voice had thousands of members. And there was an emotional outpouring from gamers who have just had enough of their pastime being beaten up by ignorant politicians and journalists. The power of the internet once again proving that it is greater than the power of the establishment.

It is a fact now that most people play video games. So most people understand video games. So the stupid politicians just make themselves look absolutely ridiculous to the voters when they make their ignorant and misinformed speeches. Keith Vaz has succeeded in making himself a figure of derision for a lot of people.

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ABC Radio in Australia is the equivalent of the BBC Radio 4 in the uk. They have a programme called the Law Report, presented by Damien Carrick, which looks at the important legal issues of the day. They have just broadcast a programme about the Evony LLC Vs Bruce Everiss case which concerns articles written on this blog.

You can read a transcript of the programme or listen to it online here.

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The latest news will come as no surprise to readers here. I have written multiple articles on how and why Electronic Arts is losing so much money. And I have written multiple articles about what is wrong with the games industry and why it is shedding so many staff.

This latest news is that EA losses are even worse than before. They made a fiscal Q2 loss of $391 million, 26% up from the year before. Whilst game sales are booming and the customer base is bigger than ever before. So now EA have instituted massive redundancies. Current estimates are that 1,500 staff are to go. The worst hit studios seem to be Tiburon, Mythic, Black Box and Redwood Shores. Maybe shareholders should be looking at the strategic management of the company.

This is a huge amount of personal tragedy for those involved. There is no way that the rest of the games industry can absorb so many people, especially when so many have already been made redundant elsewhere. So lots of people will be leaving the industry to work in other industries. The upside here is that game developers tend to be very intelligent and well educated people and can generally expect to earn far more outside the game industry and to experience far better working conditions too.

To anyone training to work in the game industry or thinking about such training things look very bad indeed. Not only are there going to be far less jobs for some time, there will also be many very experienced applicants for every position that comes up. Time, perhaps, to reconsider your options.

Finally, if any EA management are visiting  here I very strongly suggest that you read this, it was written with you in mind.

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